CIAF 2026 and the Power of Play: Ryan Presley’s Inferno
Image credit: Ryan Presley, Inferno, 2025, video game. Courtesy of Milani Gallery.
Video games have often been dismissed as entertainment or escapism, but their cultural and narrative capacities run far deeper. Like novels or cinema, games create worlds: spaces where storytelling unfolds through participation and engagement, allowing players to inhabit systems rather than simply observe them. In recent years, artists have increasingly turned to gaming technologies not only as aesthetic tools, but also as frameworks for political and social critique.
Ryan Presley’s Inferno, presented as part of the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair’s 2026 public program Reclamation & Regeneration, harnesses this potential. Installed across three arcade-style gaming stations at the Tanks Arts Centre this July, the immersive digital activation transforms gameplay into a vehicle for examining sovereignty, surveillance, and environmental control through a distinctly First Nations lens.
Set within a speculative landscape shaped by mining interests and systems of observation, Inferno invites players to disrupt mineral-scouting helicopters traversing Central Australia while liberating water supplies and extending gameplay. Its mechanics may recall classic arcade systems, but Presley’s work moves far beyond nostalgia. Instead, the artist reframes gaming as a contemporary mode of First Nations storytelling, one capable of making visible the structures of colonial power that continue to shape Australia today.
Born in Alice Springs and based in Brisbane, Presley has built a practice that consistently interrogates systems of power, religion, capitalism, and colonialism. Across painting, installation, and digital media, his works expose the quiet normalisation of economic and political domination embedded in everyday life. Inferno extends these concerns into an interactive environment, asking audiences not simply to witness these systems, but to navigate them directly.
The choice of gaming as a medium is significant. Unlike static forms of storytelling, video games position audiences within processes of decision-making. Through participation, players begin to understand the rules governing a world: who controls resources, who is surveilled, who benefits from the system, and who is left vulnerable. In Presley’s hands, the game environment becomes a space where the ongoing impacts of colonial systems can be experienced spatially and emotionally, rather than explained didactically.
CIAF Artistic Director Teho Ropeyarn describes interactive digital works as part of the fair’s evolving commitment to presenting contemporary First Nations practice across diverse creative forms.
“CIAF continues to evolve the ways audiences can experience First Nations storytelling and creative expression,” Mr Ropeyarn said.
“Ryan Presley’s work challenges audiences to think critically while engaging through a highly accessible and immersive format that speaks strongly to younger and digitally connected audiences.”
Image credit: Portrait of Ryan Presley. Photo: Saul Steed
This evolution feels especially timely within the broader landscape of contemporary art, where digital technologies increasingly shape how stories are made and received. Yet Inferno resists the novelty often associated with immersive art experiences. It is not designed for spectacle or an Instagram reel, but to invite audiences to unpack systems of environmental and political control that remain deeply embedded within Australia’s colonial legacy.
Presley’s work also sits within a wider history of speculative and Indigenous futurist practices that use imagined worlds to critique present realities. By constructing alternate environments, artists can expose the logic of existing systems with greater clarity. The speculative becomes a tool for truth-telling.
As part of CIAF’s broader thematic focus on reclamation and regeneration, Inferno is a reminder of the expansive contemporary practices being explored by First Nations artists. Presley demonstrates how gaming can become a powerful cultural and political language, capable of holding complexity while remaining accessible and deeply engaging.
Sometimes, creating a world for people to explore, especially one where they can uncover the problem themselves, can reveal far more than simply telling them what is wrong.
CIAF 2026
July 9 to 12 2026
Tanks Arts Centre and satellite venues across Gimuy/Cairns
ciaf.com.au
